Editor's Note: Throughout the week, Ruchir Sharma will be posting thought-provoking questions with answers and explanations on CNN.com/GPS. Be sure to check out his excellent new book Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles.
Question: What are the only two countries that have grown at an average annual pace of more than 5 percent for the last five decades in a row? FULL POST
Editor’s Note: Contributors to this post will be part of a panel on the topic taking place on Thursday, February 9th in Washington, D.C. Sign up for the event here. This post is part of the Global Innovation Showcase created by the New America Foundation and the Global Public Square.
There are now over 5 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide, according to the International Telecommunications Union, with global mobile penetration at 87 percent. In the developing world, where landlines are especially scarce in rural areas, mobiles have been used for governance, banking, agriculture, education, health, commerce, reporting news, political participation, and reducing corruption.
But the ubiquity of the mobile phone - and its application to a diverse and growing set of development goals - doesn’t guarantee economic or social progress.
Are mobiles just another high-tech solution to what are essentially systemic and deeply rooted problems? Are mobile solutions for combating global poverty overhyped?
Editor's Note: Isobel Coleman is a Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy, Director of the Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Initiative. This blog post is reprinted with the permission of the Council on Foreign Relations.
By Isobel Coleman, CFR.org
As anti-government demonstrations continue unabated in Yemen, there are few signs of resolution to its current impasse. Growing violence, in Sana’a and in the north and southwest provinces, threatens to dissolve into full-fledged civil war. This would not only be (further) destabilizing to the region, but runs the risk of precipitating a full-blown humanitarian crisis. Yemen already struggles with acute problems of food security, water shortages, and unemployment. A collapse of the state would reverberate across the Gulf, and demand further international involvement. FULL POST
Editor's Note: Mahmoud Mohieldin is a World Bank Managing Director, responsible for the Bank’s knowledge development. This post is part of the Global Innovation Showcase created by the New America Foundation and the Global Public Square.
By Mahmoud Mohieldin – Special to CNN
What does a TV program showcasing Bollywood film songs have to do with India’s development? Viewers don’t typically sit in front of the television expecting to be empowered with knowledge that helps them improve their lives. But if writers and producers are provided with substantive information about critical topics, could television be transformed into more than just entertainment? Could popular programs be used to subtly yet effectively deliver information that convinces audiences to change their behavior and improve their lives – or, in the case of same language subtitling, helps them learn to read?
That was the idea behind The World Bank’s Development Marketplace grant program in financing an innovative pilot led by Brij Kothari at PlanetRead Literacy for a Billion. The pilot added Hindi subtitles to a popular television program that showcased Bollywood film songs, with striking results. As compared to a control group, levels of illiteracy were cut in half, and the percent of children who were learning to read and became good readers more than doubled. FULL POST
Editor's Note: Maria Eitel, president of the Nike Foundation, works with key players in economic and social development to achieve the foundation's objective of contributing to poverty alleviation.
By Maria Eitel - Special to CNN
Investing in a girl stops poverty before it starts. That's the simple premise of the powerful force we call "The Girl Effect." This week, The Girl Effect is on the global stage at the Clinton Global Initiative and the World Bank Annual Meeting. Take it from World Bank President Robert Zoellick or former U.S. President Bill Clinton: Investing in girls is smart economics.
Editor’s note: Blair Glencorse is an expert on governance and development. He was selected as member of the Transatlantic Network 2020 and as a UN Alliance of Civilizations Fellow for the Middle-East and North Africa. You can follow him on Twitter @blairglencorse.
By Blair Glencorse - Special to CNN
The fighting in Libya is coming to an end, but years of dictatorship, repression and brutal violence have left very deep social, economic and political divides within Libyan society. The extent of these problems is only just becoming clear as attention turns from war fighting to post-war reconstruction.
The West feels the urge to support a better future for the Libyan people as it should - both because it is in our interests and is the right thing to do - but if past experience is any guide, our efforts will hurt as much as help this process.
Editor's Note: Paul Collier is Professor of Economics at Oxford University and the author of The Bottom Billion. Following the Haitian hurricanes of 2008, he worked with the Haitian government on the report Haiti: From Natural Catastrophe to Economic Security.
By Paul Collier, Foreign Affairs
The catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, was the 9/11 of humanitarian disasters. The death and misery that resulted were beamed out to a global television audience, unleashing public sympathy on an unprecedented scale. More than half of all U.S. households donated to the relief operation. But whereas the government responses to the nearly 3,000 killed on 9/11 have ensured that that event has remained at the center of global attention for the decade since, memories of the more than 200,000 Haitians slain by the earthquake, and of the approximately 4,000 more who died of cholera after it, have quickly faded.
FULL POST
Editor's Note: Dawn Brancati is an assistant professor in the political science department at Washington University in St. Louis. Jack L. Snyder is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations in the political science department and the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.
By Dawn Brancati and Jack L. Snyder, Foreign Affairs
With Libya still in the hands of armed regional and tribal factions - each challenging the other's pretensions to political authority - it seems wishful to believe that the country will enjoy a smooth and quick transition to stable democracy. Even so, Libya's National Transitional Council and the United Nations are already planning for Libya's first elections. FULL POST
Who is Nathan Myhrvold? Well, one way to describe him would be the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, the scientific brains of that company for 14 years.
I think Nathan qualifies for the term "boy genius." He began college at age 14, studied geophysics at UCLA, got a master's in mathematical economics at Princeton, and then simultaneously worked on a Ph.D. in physics at the same university - all done by the age of 23. He then spent a year working with Stephen Hawking, who many regard as the greatest theoretical physicist alive. He left the academy at that point and started his own company.
After leaving Microsoft, he has used his considerable fortune to fund scientific research of all kinds - archaeological excavations, a radio telescope, a new engine. He has a company called Intellectual Ventures that funds inventors and buys their inventions and patents. His company holds more than 20,000 patents. And every year, the company files 500 patent applications.
Amar Bakshi talked to Nathan Myhrvold about one particularly exciting project involving super-fast lasers.
Francis Fukuyama is a political scientist at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He wrote the seminal essay The End of History and the Last Man and most recently published The Origins of Political Order.
Amar C. Bakshi: The Origins of Political Order is a magisterial book. What’s the main takeaway for Americans?
Francis Fukuyama: We who live in developed modern countries take government for granted. In fact, we as Americans, given our anti-statist political culture, think that the problem is always too much government.
We don’t appreciate the importance of having a functioning government and how difficult it was historically to create a society in which government existed. FULL POST
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